The
frenetic commercialism of Christmas continues to escalate despite all the warnings
from climate scientists that Western lifestyles are destroying the
planet. We still buy enough Christmas trees in the UK alone to reach from
London to New York and back, and the card packaging that’s thrown away could cover
Big Ben almost 260,000 times—not to mention the 4,500 tonnes of tin
foil, two million turkeys, 74 million mince pies and five million mounds of
charred raisins from rejected Christmas puddings that are discarded in the UK come
January. The mountain of e-waste from discarded electronic items—many of them bought
as unwanted gifts—is projected to reach ten
million tonnes by 2020.

Just
pause for a moment and picture the scale of that waste, along with the ecological
destruction it represents. Christmas is merely an exaggerated illustration of the
gross materialism that defines our lives in a consumerist society.

What
is more difficult to recognise is that our profligate consumption habits also exacerbate
levels of inequality worldwide. The so-called ‘developed world’—roughly 20
per cent of the global population—consumes a hugely disproportionate
share of the earth’s resources, and is responsible for at
least half of all greenhouse gas emissions. Behind such statistics
lies a depressing reality: the artificial standards of living of the global
North are dependent on the dire working conditions and impoverishment of
millions of people throughout the global South.

In
spite of the spurious claims of trickledown economics, the number of people
living on less than $5-a-day has increased by more
than 1.1 billion since the 1980s. The vast majority of people who
live in ‘developing’ countries survive on less
than $10-a-day; none of them can afford the wasteful, conspicuous
consumption that we consider ‘normal.’

Our
personal complicity in this unsustainable global order is complex, because we
are all caught up in a socioeconomic and cultural system that depends on ever-expanding
consumerism for its survival. Everywhere, we are besieged by messages that encourage
us to ‘buy more stuff,’ as profit-driven businesses increasingly seek to meet
our needs (real or constructed) through the marketplace. Our consumption
patterns are often tied to our sense of identity, our desire for belonging, and
our need for comfort and self-esteem.

We
are all victims of an excessively commercialised culture, not just via
environmental harm and global warming but also through the psychological and
emotional damage that afflicts everyone in one form or another. We experience
that harm through the
time-poverty of affluence; through the pressures of living in an
individualistic and market-dominated society; and through everything we’ve lost
on the competitive work/consume
treadmill – our freedom for leisure, our mental space and our
community cohesion.

There
is also an inarticulable form of spiritual harm that arises from being part of an
exploitative world order, in which our over-consuming lifestyles in the West
are connected to the immiseration of people in poorer countries who we do not
know, or care to know. Simply put, it is impossible to reconcile the twin
challenges of ending poverty and achieving environmental sustainability unless we
also confront the huge imbalances in consumption patterns across the world, and
fundamentally re-imagine the economy in ways that escape from the growth
compulsion.

Hence
the resurgent focus on post-growth
economics in a world of limits which recognises the importance of
reducing the use of natural resources in high-income countries, so that poorer
nations can grow their economies sustainably and meet the basic needs of their
populations. Nowhere is the case for sharing the world’s resources more obvious
or urgent than in the need to achieve equity-based
sustainable development or ‘one planet lifestyles’ for all. Yet our
societies remain far distant from embarking on this great transition.

What
better example than the spectacle of French President Emmanuel Macron convening
the ‘One Planet
Summit’ at the end of 2017 to demonstrate international solidarity
in addressing climate change, while at the same time governments were attending
the resurrected World Trade Organisation talks in their continued attempts to
turn the world into a
corporate playground with minimal protections for the poor.

Questions
of global injustice and ecological imbalance may seem far removed from our daily
lives, but everyone who participates in modern consumerist society is conjointly
responsible for perpetuating destruction on an international scale. Our
frenzied spending around Thanksgiving and Christmas is a case in point, further
preventing us from embracing the radical transformations required in the
transition to a post-growth world. What, then, should we do?

In
fact there are already lots of ways to de-commercialise Christmas, like the ‘buy nothing’ movement that
advocates we ignore the conditioned compulsion to purchase luxury goods. We can
all practise ethical giving and support the work of related activist
groups and charitable
organisations. For example, Christian Aid have released a witty
video that entreats UK citizens to be aware of festive food waste in
the context of global hunger, and donate £10 from Christmas food shopping—enough
for a family in South Sudan to eat for a week.

Actions
like these constitute small steps towards celebrating Christmas with more awareness
of the critical world situation, and the need for Western populations to live
more lightly on the earth. When extended beyond the holiday season, that
awareness could be translated into a mass movement that rejects the consumerist
ethos and voluntarily
downshifts to lifestyles that meet our needs in ways that bypass the
mainstream economy.

As
proponents of the gift
economy, the commons
and collaborative
consumption all attest, this is the long-term antidote to mass
consumption. We must become co-creators of alternative economic systems in
which we reinvest in our communities, shift our values towards quality of life
and wellbeing, and embrace a new ethic of sufficiency. We must resist the
competitive economic pressures towards materialism and privatised modes of
living, thereby releasing time and energy for cooperative activities that
promote communal production, co-owning and civic engagement. In short, we need an
expanded understanding of what it means to be human in a world of shared
resources.

Christmas
provides us with a unique opportunity to do this. In his essay on “Christmas,
the System and I,” Mohammed Mesbahi exhorts us to imagine what could
be done if all the money we needlessly spend on festivities and unwanted gifts
was pooled together and redistributed to those who urgently need it. If Jesus
were walking among us today, writes Mesbahi, surely that is what he would call
us to do. Perhaps that would be an expression of the true meaning of Christmas
in the twenty first century.

About the author

Adam Parsons is the editor
at Share The World's
Resources (STWR), a London-based civil society organisation
campaigning for a fairer sharing of wealth, power and resources within and
between nations. To read more of his writings or to contact him, visit this link.

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